Fair to bring more choices to consumers by copying other people's work?

Samsung has again accused Apple of limiting consumer choice by suing them to stop the sales of Samsung Galaxy S III. I'm not able to understand the rationale behind their thinking because based on what I have read, it seems to them that copying a patent without giving royalties is valid as long as it gives consumers more choices. So by nature of that argument, it would also seem that pirated DVDs/software are legal because they do not limit the consumer choice.

I was involved in creation of products previously so I know the pain of someone taking your work, copying it wholesale, and saying it's their innovation. No matter how simple a product look like, it does not override the fact that many man hours have been put to create it. You may not even know that the product may be the 20th version and took years of hard work because it just looks simple to use.

Simple to use, not easy to do. The simpler it is, the harder to do.

Let's use an example closer to home. I believe some people at work also have encountered this kind of situation where you worked your heart out on a particular deliverable, only to have the person rubber stamping it with their approval taking it as their own work and not crediting you or compensating you for the work done. The deliverable might look simple but you have put in hours/days/months/years of hard work for it.

Now do you think it is still fair?